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134 quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over forty novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived...
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The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in... →

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Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

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I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for... →

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If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in... →

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Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it was terrible we had no... →

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Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness... →

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I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall... →

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Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books... →

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Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

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For some reason, voters can be brainwashed, and they vote sometimes against their own best interests, let alone voting against the interests of... →

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Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more... →

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'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation... →

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I think whenever we think of our hometowns, we tend to think of very specific people: with whom you rode on the school bus, who was your next door... →

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